PERFORMANCE-RELATED pay awards have inspired teachers to raise their game and achieve better results for GCSE pupils, according to a study of the scheme.

In spite of initial hostility to the idea among teachers, researchers from the University of Bristol have found that children whose teacher had received a financial performance reward, achieved half a grade higher in each subject at GCSE.

The Performance Threshold scheme was introduced in 2000 to give an incentive to experienced teachers, who had been previously paid on a unified basic salary scale and could only raise their wages by taking on extra administrative duties.

Five years ago, the concept of bonuses for individual teachers was condemned by unions for being divisive and unfair.

But in Paying Teachers by Results Simon Burgess and Carol Propper, of the Centre for Market and Public Organisation, found that the introduction of the scheme achieved “on average half a GCSE point more than equivalent pupils taught by the same teachers before the scheme was introduced”. The academics, who assessed the results of 181 teachers at 25 schools from the Midlands to Bristol, tracked the average progress of their 14-year-old pupils at Key Stage 3 and later at GCSE level, before and after the reform.

By looking also at the scores of those staff who were not eligible for the increased pay awards and comparing both sets of results, they concluded that higher pay did achieve better grades. They also found that the less achieving 14-year-olds made more gains in their tests than higher-scoring pupils The Performance Threshold system resulted in the scrapping of a nine-point pay scale, under which five years ago teachers could be paid anything from £14,658 to £23,193.

Passing the threshold leads to an annual £2,000 bonus per year until the end of their careers. The Government allocated £908.5 million funding last year to schools on the basis of the number of “threshold and post-threshold teachers”. The increases, which can take a teacher’s pay up to £30,000, are assessed against rigorous criteria and annual targets. They are paid for out of the schools’ funds and have marked a sea change in how children are taught.

Marcia Twelftree, head teacher of Charters school in Ascot, has 104 teachers to about 1,600 teenagers. She insists that good schools have always rewarded hard-working staff members. “I pay teachers what they are worth. I believe that a good school can only be a good school if you pay the teachers properly.”

In the past, the Bristol team said, many heads claimed that they would have liked to reward staff but could not afford to. Nowadays they are bound to do so, if their teachers have met the strict criteria. The National Union of Teachers, which opposed the scheme, found little praise for it yesterday.

Arguing that the vast majority of staff who applied for the extra money were granted it, a spokesman said: “It shows the daftness of performance- related pay because the majority of children are taught by good teachers. They are not be granted performance-related pay if they have taught for less than five years, so it’s not a valid comparison.”

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